


Considered Boundaries

by Harukami



Series: For The Birds [6]
Category: DRAMAtical Murder
Genre: M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-18
Updated: 2014-09-18
Packaged: 2018-02-17 20:13:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2321861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Harukami/pseuds/Harukami
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Huracan (Tori) decides to work on changing himself somewhat with the goal of persuing a relationship with Beni; Aoba decides to talk to Tae about Mink.</p>
<p>Sorry it's taken so long to update, everyone! I've written out a full plotline for this series properly, so the next part shouldn't be long at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Considered Boundaries

It's been a few days since he'd told Beni that he liked him, and they're still in Midorijima. Aoba has been acting nervous lately, so it's not exactly a surprise when, after dinner and they have returned to Aoba's room, Aoba draws a deep breath.

"Mink, do you mind staying up here while I go and -- I need to talk to Granny about. Ah. Things."

Huracan sees Mink glance toward the veranda despite himself -- most likely calculating possible escape routes. He's not going to take them, Huracan knows. He's committed to this, to dealing with all of it, and if Tae wished to come and kill him for it he'd probably only resist for Aoba's sake, not his own. But he can't swallow the impulse to check anyway, it seems. "Yes," he just says.

"I won't -- don't reveal any of it to anyone yourself," Aoba warns. "I don't really intend to tell her the... specifics. Some things are personal. Just... generalities about the sort of... about how things were. But you're right that if I don't it's always a lie on some level."

Mink lets out a breath, not quite a sigh. "Of course." 

He reaches for Aoba in an impulsive gesture that Ren looks away from and Aoba returns, taking his hand and raising it to his mouth, kissing it lightly. It could be almost archaic, but had nothing of that in it; just, that was the nearest part of Mink to kiss. "It'll be okay," Aoba tells him.

"It's fine to not be okay, under these circumstances."

"Yeah," Aoba says. It sounds as if his mouth is dry. "I'll be back soon."

Mink doesn't ask him to -- wouldn't ask him to -- but Huracan flies after Aoba regardless, quiet. Ren sends him an alarmed message; he tells Ren, simply, that he will be back momentarily. Ren is a little stuck, less able to follow without either Mink or Aoba noticing, so he can't do much about it. 

He parks himself outside of the kitchen door in time to hear,

"It's about Mink and I."

"Ah. Go ahead, then."

Aoba's audibly nervous; Tae is audibly restrained. There is a momentary pause, and Huracan can imagine Aoba's tense hunched form. "He and I are ... in a relationship."

"I gathered," Tae says, drily. 

"Well, yes, but, I mean. When we originally met, you know. He wasn't very nice to me. Um... well, that's putting it mildly. He was single-minded and violent in search of his goals, and everything in front of him was either usable or unusable. But he's -- it's different now. It's not even that he's changed, but the person who was under all that is able to live again. It's not..." Aoba swallows. "I don't want you to think that things were good or anything, and when I went after him it was really to get...some kind of resolution. I could see two sides to him and I wanted to be able to understand how those parts fit together. I know you already thought I was out of my mind, trying to chase after someone across the world on just an image but..."

Tae lets out a rough breath. "I got that impression," she says, bluntly. "You were haunted, and you wanted to exorcise your ghosts. That much was obvious. The look you had wasn't the look of a young man in love. Of course, I worried. But I have to trust you to make your own decisions."

"...Granny..."

"And you came back _with_ the look of a young man in love." She lets out another sigh, almost irritable. "What's a grandmother to do with you, anyway...?"

Aoba begins to speak again, but Huracan is drawn away by Mink calling for him along their connection. A little embarrassed, he flies back up the stairs to rejoin them. Ren is on his cushion with a guilty expression -- so he'd been the one who'd drawn Mink's attention to Huracan's absence -- and Mink is out on the veranda, leaning on the balcony and taking in the city air.

Huracan gives Ren an apologetic nod as he flies past, then joins Mink on the railing. "Mink."

"Don't do that," Mink says. "I have trust to keep."

Actually guilty now, Huracan inclines his head. "I apologize," he says. "It was for my own curiosity."

Mink glances aside at him, brows furrowed. "Your own curiosity," he echoes.

There had been a time, Huracan knows, that Mink had considered him incapable of any kind of genuine emotion or thought at all; that he's a machine designed to mimic human thought patterns and behaviors is undeniable, and certainly it is up to the observer to decide how much of that is simply mimicry and how much comes from any place of spontaneity. Even Huracan himself has had to question it; even if he feels something he considers 'real', is it real or just a mimicry of what a human would feel in similar circumstances? His thought patterns are not organic, so could he be said to have a mind of his own? Is performance the same as legitimacy, especially if he is programmed to not be able to tell the difference in himself, to not break the illusion?

But whether it's objectively 'real', he does have something that resembles feelings, and has nothing to compare his own feelings to, and lately, Mink has been reacting more and more to them as if they were real.

For a while now, he's almost been trying to prove himself, he thinks. Showing off a particularly complex connection between ideas, connections involving leaps of logic that a machine 'shouldn't' be able to make -- even though it obviously can, since there's nothing of him outside of what was created. He remembers Mink being surprised at him back when he was discussing Valentine's Day, back when he was commenting on Aoba's choices around Mink's birthday, and his own pride and desire kept himself reaching for that surprise. Mink gave him challenges to prove himself, and he threw that back at Mink with ease, passed his little tests of sapience as best as something programmed to mimic sapience could do.

Seeing Beni with Koujaku a few days earlier, however, has made him realize something. Koujaku gives a lot to Beni, of course. Respect, affection, partnership. But the things that Beni gives back aren't just a response to that; he loves him, he supports him. Sometimes he goes behind his back. Beni's feelings are complicated, not simply an echo. And that is something Beni is capable of in his own; Huracan, too, knows that he is capable of it. He simply hasn't done it. It hasn't been expected of him; it wasn't relevant to his role as a tool.

But as Aoba just pointed out, Mink is no longer pushing himself along a path where everything in a life is either a tool or a distraction.

Huracan resettles his wings, takes a puff on his cigar, and says, a little stilted, "Are you all right, Mink?"

"Haa?" Mink straightens a little. "What, have I given you cause for concern? My health is fine, isn't it?"

"No, I mean..." This is embarrassing. "This must be difficult."

"...You're asking if I'm all right _emotionally_?" Mink confirms, that edge of disbelief still in his voice.

The tone almost seems to crawl across Huracan's back. There is a sort of defensiveness that would be easy to reach for at times like this, he thinks, and forces himself away from it. "Well, yes. Under the circumstances; being here again, not knowing what's going on downstairs, waiting to be condemned for actions you deserve to be condemned for. I don't think it would be unreasonable to be uneasy or unhappy right now."

Mink is silent for a long moment, and Huracan braces himself to be brushed off, but then Mink sighs, and leans against the railing again. There's no view here; the veranda just looks out over a narrow alley, with a windowless building wall on the other side, and the air isn't fresh at all, but perhaps it's closer to something Mink is familiar with than Aoba's room, which Tae kept as it had been even though when Aoba came back, it was to stay in a hotel. The room itself is largely something Aoba hasn't changed since he was a teenager, and it reads as a teenager's room, not something belonging to the mature and confident man he is. The one he has only become more of since he's come out to stay with Mink.

"Yes," Mink says. "It's hard. But it's not something that..." He rolls his shoulders in a heavy half-shrug. "It's not mine to carry. The places where it's difficult are all places I created. Feeling sorry for myself, regretting things, would just be an additional form of violence. I don't... want to make that something else for him to deal with."

"He would be glad to help you with it."

"Yes," Mink says. "But that just means it comes back to my choices."

Huracan considers that, shifting from foot to foot. "Still. I'll listen if you want to talk," he offers, instead. "From what we've seen of those others, there are things that get easier once they're talked about."

"Mm. I'll consider it." Mink turns, leans his back and elbows against the railing instead, exhaling. "What's with the change of attitude?"

Huracan doesn't make a pretense that he doesn't know what Mink is talking about. "I suppose it's just desire."

"Desire?"

"My attitude is changing because I want it to," Huracan says. He struggles to verbalize it but there is, as he'd thought, perhaps meaning in speaking it at all. "...If I don't try to change, I won't, will I? I've watched you two enough to understand that," he says, and then glances back at Ren, who is either in sleep mode or putting out a good pretense of it. But as far as he can tell, Ren hasn't changed at all, so there's no point in trying to include him. "And if I'm incapable of change, I'm incapable of growth."

"True," Mink allows. "I wasn't aware growth was a goal of yours."

Huracan feels strangely uncomfortable, but pushes on. "It hadn't been," he says. "I was content to be the thing that you had wanted me to be, and to adapt only in terms of commanding more respect for that." Mink blinks, and Huracan says, "But then I hurt his feelings," and shuts himself up abruptly.

He hadn't meant for that to come out.

"Whose?" Mink asks after a moment.

"I -- it's nothing."

Mink sighs. "I won't force it," he says. "But I'd like it if you explained."

"There's... someone I like," Huracan says, and something inside his chest cavity seems to crawl, an uncomfortable shifting tension that he couldn't begin to explain. "We have been communicating for some weeks now in private, but I am not a terribly respectful individual, as you are aware, and have deliberately struck at sensitive spots to draw reactions from him. I would like, I suppose, to overcome that in myself."

There it is, then, all out, as openly as if he were a real person. That uncomfortable tension hasn't gone away and it's a little dizzying, disorienting. He finds himself waiting for an answer with that sensation spiraling rapidly, growing worse and worse.

Mink's expression is utterly taken aback, but after a long pause, he shakes his head and says, "Huh." It's a tone of acceptance, and his tension unwinds all at once, almost absurdly quickly, as if the uncertainty over Mink's acceptance had been the reason for it. "So you've been carrying on a romance behind my back."

"More or less," Huracan admits.

"Anyone I know?"

Huracan lets out a laugh, ducks his head. "I think I'd better not say."

Mink laughs as well, the sound thick with absurdity. But it seems, in its own way, to have helped. Some of the tension around Mink as well seems to have broken, as if he were drawn out of his own dark thoughts with this unexpected drama from an unexpected source. "You're an Allmate."

"I've noticed that, yes."

"Are you even capable?"

"With all respect, that's a rude question," Huracan retorts.

Another snorted laugh, this one coming even more easily. "So it is," he agrees. "None of my business, whatever. Unless you're going to be bringing him home."

"I'm afraid that isn't possible."

"Hmm," Mink says, and closes his eyes, that edge of humor still there. "Are you intimidated by this situation?"

"Completely," Huracan admits.

Mink reaches out and puts a hand on Huracan's back, large fingers tracing along the feathers on his back, between where his wings are settled. It's not the first time, of course, that Mink has petted him or shown any kind of affection; his own decorations are a symptom of Mink's desire to attach to him even from long before he was willing to act further on it. But it feels nice, feels relieving, and Huracan settles himself into the touch with a push.

"Listen," Mink says. "It's not like I can give you any dating advice. You're a bird. A machine."

I've noticed that, Huracan doesn't add; he just makes an agreeable noise.

"And you might be disinclined to take my advice, considering. But if you've been having trouble with boundaries, there's something to keep in mind." Mink's fingers scratch lightly just under his crest, which he obligingly spreads. "You can't do things just to see someone's reactions. That's a show of power, and it's understandable you've been hurting him."

"Yes..." Huracan feels, he realizes, almost overwhelmed at this sudden gentleness and empathy from Mink, but he doesn't want to do anything that would stop it, so he listens attentively, leans into the touches.

"If you want to maintain a relationship, you need honesty, but not brutal honesty. You need considered honesty. Consider his reactions. Consider his feelings. Be honest in a way that respects those," Mink says. He sighs, some heaviness coming around him again. "Relationships aren't about push and pull, and they're not about overwhelming the other or being overwhelmed. You have to consider their feelings, consider your own feelings, accept what's offered and offer other things in return. It's not difficult, but it's not simple either. Not that I know how much of that you can use."

Huracan tries to consider how to respond -- it seems like advice anyone could use, honestly, and he's about to answer as much when Aoba comes up the stairs, entering the room. 

"Ah, Mink?"

He both sounds and looks exhausted, tears staining his face, and Huracan wonders what he missed in that conversation by leaving when Mink had called him -- but then, it's hardly his business to know, he reminds himself. Mink's hand falls from Huracan's back and he spreads his wings, takes off into the main bedroom to settle down near Ren and give them some privacy. He can hear them start to talk ("Of course, it's not like Granny was okay with it or anything, but--") and tunes them out, closing his eyes and sending out a message:

_Beni, I would like to discuss some things with you._

There's hardly any time before he gets a message back: _Yo, meet me online!_ , and coordinates sent with it.

There's a sort of urgency to it, like Beni has been waiting for Huracan to make the next move, and Huracan feels a spike of -- something, not quite anticipation or excitement, but close to either. He enters online mode, connecting, and looks around for Beni.

Beni barrels into him a moment later, but the force of his movement isn't from happiness; worry is radiating from him as he grabs the front of Huracan's rhyme robe and shakes him. "Hey, I'm freaking out here," he says. "I don't know what to do!"

With a sinking feeling, Huracan takes Beni by the shoulders. This wasn't what he was hoping for. But, he reminds himself, it's what's in front of him, so he needs to be patient. "What is it...?"

"Something's not right with Koujaku, man!"


End file.
